Ran Prieur

May 12.

2017-05-12T12:00:46Z

May 12. Yesterday I ate my usual dose of cannabutter after a five day break, but I did something different. I ate it on an empty stomach, and then rode my bike to the store and back, and then ate a big meal. And I got so high that I couldn't read! Now we're getting into the philosophy of science, because I'm tempted tell a story about the inner workings of the body, but that way of thinking is not necessary and can even get in the way. The important thing is not whether I can explain it, but whether the pattern repeats, so I'm going to continue testing and see if that sequence -- dose, exercise, meal -- consistently brings a stronger high.

I also came up with a model of how tolerance works: My subconscious mind is constantly generating stuff that I can access high but not sober. And every time I get to a given level of "high" (it's more like going deep than going up) I harvest what's been generated at that level since the last time I was there. So if I get to a [7] every day, it doesn't feel like a [7] because my "creative department" only has a day's worth of stuff. Yesterday I rated myself [8.5], and looking at my journal, I haven't been there since January 15, when I jotted nuggets like "Acting is dancing with your face" and "Power is the right to be weak."

And yesterday I clearly saw the solution to depression and motivation -- but it's not the first time I've noticed this, and it's easier said than done. My inner dialogue, on the boundary between conscious and subconscious, is extremely inefficient, like a clunky machine that half the time works against itself. Now we're coming back to Monday's subject, because it can be useful to look at my personal history and see how my mind got that way, but that can also be a distraction. The important thing is just to go in there and fix it, which requires moment after moment, hour after hour, month after month, of practicing metacognition.

That's one reason I think sitting meditation is overrated. Of all the stuff in your head that needs to be fixed, most of it will never come up when you're trying to do nothing, only when you're going about your normal day, so that should be the main focus of inner attention. Gurdjieff was saying that more than a hundred years ago.

I also want to point out that the practice of metacognition has to be completely non-judging, because if it's even a little big judging, you fall into a recursive loop: judging yourself for judging yourself and so on.

May 10.

2017-05-10T22:40:08Z

May 10. With the weather getting warmer, I'm going barefoot as much as possible. Last night I dreamed that I was in some kind of office and realized that I'd forgotten to wear shoes, so I was trying to go discreetly outside to put my shoes on and come back in.

Suddenly I understand what's going on with kids who dream they're naked at school. Just as I know there's nothing wrong with not wearing shoes, they know there's nothing wrong with not wearing clothes. The dream is about being in an insane world, a world full of rules that you can't reason out from anything practical or ethical -- you just have to learn the rules one by one, and there's always a fear that you'll get a big one wrong. It's not a shame dream -- it's a Kafka dream!

And if adults stop dreaming that they're naked, it's because they've internalized the rule.

May 8.

2017-05-08T20:20:18Z

May 8. I'm busy and don't have a post ready, so I'll run with something I just wrote on the subreddit, answering this post and James Hillman's argument that we shouldn't look at childhood trauma to solve psychological problems, because other cultures don't do that.

Everyone I know has been damaged by their childhood, and a lot of people get better by looking into that. It's not a myth -- we think that way because it works. I agree that Freud pulled a lot of ideas out of his ass, but that doesn't invalidate the whole idea of looking at your deep personal history.

Now, if it's true that traditional cultures never do that, then there are two possibilities. 1) Those cultures are raising kids much better than us. 2) The way they're raising kids is so universal and so ingrained in their culture that questioning it is impossible.

Another way to look at it: in a time of cultural flux, we can't afford to take the way we were raised for granted. We have to look into how our identity was formed, we have to take apart that black box and see if it still serves us. And I'd rather live in a world where we try different ways of raising kids and make mistakes, than a world where there's only one way that's never questioned.

By the way, that same subreddit post leads with the idea that we shouldn't fight bad feelings -- we should embrace and explore them. I totally agree.

May 5.

2017-05-05T17:50:34Z

May 5. As promised, a suicide playlist. Most of these songs came from Leigh Ann, and she also had a bunch that I didn't use, including "I'm Afraid of Japan" by Owen Pallett and "Good Day To Die" by Travis. The list could be better, but I'm happy with what I could patch together in a couple days.

I've never seriously considered suicide, but selling most of my stuff and moving out of my house is like the worst of dying and living -- letting go, doing all the work, and no resolution.

Big Star - What's Going Ahn (1973)

Nothing here about dying, but it's very sad, and it leads into the next song, by a band that sounds a lot like Big Star's third album.

Money - You Look Like A Sad Painting On Both Sides Of The Sky (2016)

Benjamin Clementine - Cornerstone (2015)

Again, the lyrics don't mention a suicide, but I like that interpretation.

Carissa's Wierd - So You Wanna Be A Superhero (2002)

That edge in her voice is so unsettling.

Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident (2002)

The band has said that the lyrics are a suicide note from a mother to her son.

Bob Dylan - Ballad of Hollis Brown (1962)

The best known version is not on YouTube, but this is pretty close.

Violent Femmes - Country Death Song (1984)

This is so similar to Ballad of Hollis Brown that it's almost a cover, and a really good one.

The Decemberists - We Both Go Down Together (2005)

Okkervil River - John Allyn Smith Sails (2007)

About the poet John Berryman, incorporating the traditional song Sloop John B, made famous by the Beach Boys.

Get Well Soon - If This Hat Is Missing I Have Gone Hunting (2008)

I love that weird crescendo.

Band of Horses - The Funeral (2006)

About living on the edge of death as a heroin addict.

Orphans & Vandals - Terra Firma (2009)

A long and challenging song that I didn't appreciate until listening several times.

Nick Drake - Saturday Sun (1969)

This must be the saddest song possible, because it also has so much beauty.

May 3.

2017-05-03T15:30:38Z

May 3. Continuing from Monday, a reader reminds me that jungle tribes are almost never repressive, because everyone knows how to survive on their own, so if they don't like the way things are run, they can just walk away.

We can't do that. I know because I spent most of my thirties trying to walk away, and it turned out that homesteading requires a ton of driving, and intentional communities default to the highest and most expensive standard of living of all their members and the workload to support it. Now my advice is to get an income of $10-15k a year by any means available, and find a city with dirt cheap housing where you don't have to own a car. But to truly walk away, you have to die.

The nice thing about keeping unhappy people alive, is that they're more perceptive than happy people. They understand better how the world needs to change. There are valuable things that you can only learn at the edge of darkness, and we need some people to go there and come back. Or, seriously considering suicide enables you to consider a whole range of less extreme options.

This subreddit thread has some thoughts about suicide, and some songs, so on Friday I plan to post a suicide playlist.

But now I'm going to annoy you all by writing about sports. My new favorite NWSL team is the Boston Breakers, who have always been terrible but this year they rebuilt, and I predicted they'd make the playoffs with world class midfielder Rose Lavelle and three other rookie first rounders. But it turns out their most dangerous player is Adriana Leon, a fifth year veteran whose pro career until now has been disappointing. After regaining confidence in Europe, she's been on fire this year, and she was just player of the week with a goal, two assists, and two near-goals. That one-touch assist at 25 seconds is brilliant, and you can tell that the whole team is in sync like no other American team except North Carolina, who they play on Sunday.

May 1.

2017-05-01T13:10:11Z

May 1. A reader correctly pointed out that my mental struggles are situational, not chronic. I was a happy little kid, and I'm confident that I'll regain my full capacity for pleasure, and adequate motivation, when I get some stuff sorted out. So don't worry if I go deeper into the subject of depression by writing about suicide.

Super-smart blogger Sarah Perry, who lately has been posting on Ribbonfarm, wrote a pro-suicide book called Every Cradle is a Grave. It's mostly philosophical arguments that don't work for me -- and yet I agree that suicide should be fully legal and fully socially accepted.

My argument is practical. If suicide is normalized, it will become a very powerful form of social protest. Right now I can think of only two contexts where suicide is an effective protest: when a teenager is being bullied, and when a Buddhist monk sets himself on fire. But when tens of thousands of Americans with shitty lives overdose on opioids, everyone blames the drugs. It's not acceptable for us to say, "Despite having all these doodads of progress, my life is psychologically so hopeless that my best option is to gamble with death."

Imagine if suicide were part of the toolkit for making a better world, like a more drastic form of going on strike. Citizens could tell the government, workers could tell employers, kids could tell parents and schools: meet our demands or we'll check out. Now, maybe meeting the demands would just move the pain somewhere else. But we would all quickly stop arguing about stupid symbolic measures of quality of life, and start looking hard at subjective happiness.

Yes, I'm being glib about death. I have a strong feeling that death is better than a bad life, and I think this world has gone all the way to the other extreme, making death so forbidden, and making life so painful for so many people, that it's almost like a big torture prison. Only in this bizarre local anomaly could we entertain the philosophy that nonexistence is generally better than existence.

My favorite argument against suicide is that certain moments are worth staying for. From a reddit thread last year:

A sunny spring day, and the rain clouds were moving in. I went past a daycare where a little girl was dancing around, away from all the kids, by herself. You just never know, I thought to myself. What if I had killed myself, all that long time ago.